


all things move in sevens

by vampyrdotjpeg



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Universe, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-New Moon, Romance, Sexuality, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-03-09 11:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18916510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampyrdotjpeg/pseuds/vampyrdotjpeg
Summary: An interlude told in seven parts: At the end of New Moon Bella is not so quick to resume her relationship with Edward, and they take some time to heal and get to know each other better. Bella rides her motorcycle, makes some unlikely friends, gets a hangover, learns how to dance appropriately at a punk show, and hits reset on her and Edward's relationship.





	1. Io amo I'Italia!

**Author's Note:**

> SOME NOTES ON THIS FIC IF UR INTERESTED: 
> 
> picks up at the end of new moon and fills in the enormous gap where some major emotional reconciliation should have gone. 
> 
> another thing i am changing in this AU is that edward will be the one who almost attacked bella at her birthday party. i got this idea from @vampireguarddogs on tumblr (and here on ao3!) in their series of posts on how the different books could be improved. this just makes.... SO much sense and it never occurred to me before. it much more directly addresses the conflict between bella and edward, that he's a beautiful angel vs a bloodthirsty monster. gives bella a reason to see his POV a lot more, and also maybe consider more what it means for her to turn into a vampire herself. Etc etc. 
> 
> the other huge thing for me is jacob in eclipse. i just wanna keep him a good friend who doesn't sexually assault, coerce, or manipulate bella pretty straight forward i think!!!!
> 
> the last thing maybe worth noting is that vampires can cry in this AU - i will site the lengthy discourse on vampire body fluids on tumblr with that one (just... seriously.... why can they cum but not cry.......) 
> 
> enjoy this heaping helping of angst for chapter 1! let me know what u think!

* * *

 

 

_Oh Raphael. Guardian angel. In love and crime_

_all things move in sevens. seven compartments_

_in the heart. the seven elaborate temptations._

_seven devils cast from Mary Magdalene whore_

_of Christ._

_-_ seventh heaven by Patti Smith

 

* * *

 

 

Chapter 1: Io amo I’Italia!

 

Bella finally had a moment alone with Alice when Edward dipped into a tourist shop - his clothes were tattered and grimy, she’d realized as they exited the castle’s subterranean tunnels. With a shock, she had even recognized his clothes as the exact shirt and pants we wore the last time she saw him - some months ago by then.

“Bella,” said Alice. She’d turned around in the driver’s seat to look at Bella, her expression wary.

Bella stared owlishly. Her face felt dry - salty with tracks of shed tears down her cheeks. She licked her swollen lips. “Alice,” she said.

“Are you all right?” Alice leaned forward a little, brushed aside the hair falling from behind Bella’s ear with her cool fingers. “Maybe that’s stupid question.”

“Um,” Bella said, putting her fists to her closed eyelids. “My eyeballs feel like little rocks.”

Alice couldn’t say anything else, or maybe she wasn’t even going to, because the door opened suddenly and Edward dropped into the seat beside Bella. She didn’t look up, but knew it was him, because Alice said then, “I feel like I’m your chauffeur with the both of you sitting back there. Would anyone like a complimentary water? Both of you comfortable with the A/C back there?”

“Alice,” Edward snapped.

“Testy, testy,” Alice said sing-song, as she stepped on the gas.

Bella didn’t fall asleep, but pretended to, leaning her temple against the window. All her attention focused on the sensation of the road passing under the tires, vibrating through her toes and knees. She focused on the cool air blowing from a vent to the left. She focused on the smell of the leather, a faint smell of artificial pine. She did not allow herself to notice or think about anything else, until they deposited the car at the airport parking lot, and even then, she studiously avoided looking at either Alice or Edward, although she felt both of their eyes on her at alternating intervals.

On the crowded shuttle to the airport, they stood close together, not touching. Bella continued to train her site on the floor near her feet, but then she noticed Alice’s pointed boots, and then Edward’s feet, which were in a pair of slide sandals, which read “I HEART MILAN” across the top in bold Compact type, with a red heart. “They were the only shoes I could find at the souvenir shop.”

Bella glanced up startled at his soft voice, making eye contact for the first time ever it felt like. His eyes were black, and his face, his beautiful face which haunted her in dreams, in waking dreams, even now it seemed burned into her eyes. What a very beautiful, and terrible face. Even with how wild and even frankly dirty his hair looked, the scuff marks on his arms, his pants which were the same, and clearly worse-for-wear. She’d never seen him like that. He could be so fastidious. “Huh?”

“The sandals,” he said. He looked down, and up at Bella again, frowning now. “I wouldn’t really be wearing these, if I didn’t have to.”

“Oh,” she said. She looked down again, this time being very careful to fix her gaze on her own shoes, which bore no ill-timed message of romance.

 

* * *

 

 

At the airport she brushed her teeth and washed her face in the sink, liberally applied some deodorant, and bought the biggest magazine she could find with Alice’s credit card. She needed something to do, or to look like she was busy doing, so neither of them would talk to her.

Best case scenario, neither of them would talk to her and she would fall asleep reading some tedious article about summer’s upcoming floral trends on the runway. Worst case they would both intervene and she would burst into tears or start screaming her head off, and never stop.

Washing her face felt good and cold, and she felt a little more human until she looked in the mirror over the sink, saw the little broken capillaries around her eyes, from her fit in the Volturi waiting room. Her hair was wild, wisps drifting away from her face, a jagged and knotted part down her scalp. She tore her gaze away and met Alice and Edward where they were waiting in the terminal.

 

* * *

 

 

On the plane Bella scooted across to the window, but could see Edward in the corner of her eye, hesitating in the aisle beside her. It was a full flight, and if he didn’t sit next to Bella there wasn’t anywhere else for him to sit, so he sat. She closed her eyes, pretended to sleep, bracing for him to say something, for his arm to brush against hers.

She awoke with a jolt, sucking in a gasp of air. The cabin was dim, and very quiet except the roar of the engine. Like waves. She remembered then she’d been dreaming of the waves at La Push, plunging through, down through the weeds, roiling in the surf, bodiless, consciousness distilled to her ability to perceive alone.

She turned a little, startled as she also remembered who sat beside her. He had his head turned to her, though his arms were crossed over his chest. She could see he’d tried to tame his hair a little, it seemed like he’d combed it maybe, and got it a little wet. A droplet of water clung to the side of his neck. “Are you okay?” he said.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Um, how long did I sleep for?”

“About six hours.”

Her head spun. “Oh, wow, I didn’t even realize…” she muttered, rubbing her eyes, which felt only marginally less gritty. When she opened her eyes he was still looking at her.

“I think we should talk about what’s happened. And I need to apologize to you.”

She noticed then that his shirt said “IO HEART L’ITALIA,” on it and she read it aloud to myself. But instead of a heart it had the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

He glanced down at his shirt.

“Did it come with the sandals?” she said.

“Um. No.”

“Oh.”

“I am so, so sorry, Bella,” Edward murmured then.

Her eyes shot to his face, which was turned towards her, leaning down just a little. His eyes were so intense, even in the dark. She wished he wouldn’t look at her like that. “What are you apologizing for? I don’t get it.”

His eyes widened. “Bella, I have so much to apologize to you for. I won’t even ask for forgiveness, because I don’t deserve it, but I need you to know how very sorry I am truly for what I’ve put you through - today and everything that has happened since your birthday.”

“Uh,” she said.

He stared, unblinking. “Please say something,” he said after a few moments of silence.

“I don’t know what to say. Um. You don’t need to feel, like, guilty over anything. You wanted to go, and you left, and I’ve just been trying to deal with it. I mean, I’m sorry too - about the whole miscommunication thing, and --“

“Wait,” Edward said, his eyes closing, brow furrowing even deeper, and then relaxing. He opened his eyes again. “I need to be clear. I… I tricked you into believing that I didn’t love you when I left, and that was why I left. I left _because_ how much I love you, because I needed to try to give you a chance to have a life without the threat I pose to you. I love you, and I loved you then, and I always will love you.”

She literally gaped at his words, the air seeming to vacuum for an eternal moment of shock and she felt her face grow hot as his meaning started to sink in. “That’s not funny, Edward.”

“I’m being completely serious.”

“ _How?_ That sounds like a really messed up joke to me.”

“Bella,I wouldn’t joke about this.”

“But… but if that’s true… why would you lie about not loving me?”

His eyes fell closed and he sighed. “I thought at the time that I was protecting you.”

“ _How_?” A hysterical urge to giggle overcame her, and she sensed that she was fighting a smile. “I mean, in what _world_ is telling me I’m not good enough for you _protecting_ me?”

“I thought that if you believed I didn’t love you, and left without a single trace that you would move on from me, and have the normal life you deserve, Bella.”

Her eyes opened impossibly wider, and this time she did not succeed in suppressing a burst of totally inappropriate laughter.

Edward’s eyes flew open.

She continued laughing helplessly, (his expression of concern only fueling her deranged giggling) until the woman behind Bella’s seat shushed her, and even then she barely managed to stifle her laughter. She put her head down on her tray table, sides aching. Every time she thought she calmed down, Edward’s almost fearful look of confusion crossed her mind, and the whole thing would start over again.

Edward didn’t attempt to speak again for a while, and it was Bella who turned back to him, her head pillowed on her arms still. “Edward, if you loved me —“ She paused seeing him open his mouth, maybe to contend with her word choice. She continued: “ _If_ you did love me, why didn’t you talk to me about what you were actually feeling and thinking?”

“I should have. I was scared. I thought if I didn’t really leave you then I was weak and selfish. I was putting you in danger, just by spending time with you, being so near to you. And ”

“And then my birthday happened,” she said.

“Yes.” His face became very still, though his eyes glimmered with movement. His voice came out in a choked whisper when he next spoke. “I can’t describe to you how badly I feel about it, Bella. Of all the evil and cruel things I’ve put you through…” He closed his mouth and she could see his throat working, but he didn’t go on. He didn’t need to.

Yes, there had been that - the moment she had made no small effort to forget. The bloody tableau of her birthday. She did remember now, as she’d not really forgotten and likely never would.

This was the event that shaped the puncture in her psyche, shaped just so around the crouched form of her love, of Edward, as he glared at her without recognition or affection, focused on the jewel of blood which sat on the tip of her finger. His eyes had had a flat look to them, like there was nothing and no one behind them.

The air had vacuumed out of her lungs in a gasp of horrified realization, and then before she knew next what happened, Rosalie had roughly pushed Bella behind her. Bella slammed back into the credenza, the stack of plates, which crashed to the floor. With a yelp she lost her footing, and fell, bracing her tender palms against the shattered plates. She’d frozen, grunting against the urge to scream in surprise and pain. Her blood had formed small rivulets between the plates. Even though her head spun, she couldn’t look up, not even when the room exploded into action around her - especially not then. Better to see the blood, than Edward thrashing and growling, eyes rolling with the mad desire to drink from her, held back only by the force of his siblings and his mother, who all had huddled around him.

Bella hadn’t been able to help herself, though she wished later that she had. She’d stolen a glance at him, sure that when she saw him again, she would see the Edward she knew. But as soon as she looked into his eyes his face twisted into a grimace, and he had howled with rage as he yanked against his restraints. Emmett had only then succeeded in wresting Edward through the back door. He threw Bella an apologetic look over his shoulder.

Bella shivered at the memory in the present. Though she could feel Edward studying her face now, she couldn’t return his gaze. “I really didn’t think that would ever happen. You were always so in control.”

“But don’t you remember how I reacted to you the first time we met?” he said. 

She looked up finally, relaxing just a little when she saw his eyes, though as dark as she’d ever seen them, glinted with intelligence. “Yeah, but that was before we knew each other. And nothing like that had happened since.”

His eyebrows lowered, eyes twitching back and forth minutely. “Not that you knew about.”

It took a long, painfully drawn out second for Edward’s words to catch up to their meaning. A cold wash of anger swept down Bella’s body and she shivered now with the effort it took to suppress her own howl of rage. “No,” she said, “Not that _you told me_ _about._ ” She turned away then, pushing into the corner furthest away from Edward. He said her name but with some small mercy he gave up.

 

* * *

 

Bella drifted in and out of a miserable migraine of sleep. A vein throbbed along her skull in her dreams and in her wakefulness. At a few different points Edward handed her a small cup of ice-water which she woke only enough to drink avidly, and then fall back into her fitful dreams (a combination of the plane ride, the Pacific ocean, a winding stone hewn hallway, a drain in the floor gurgling wetly, black eyes which shone with intelligence).

At Sea-Tac they were greeted by Carlisle and Esme, who embraced Edward heartily, kissing his cheeks, stroking his hair. They each then turned to Bella with cautious smiles. “Oh, Bella,” said Esme, reaching for Bella’s hand. Bella looked down. Esme had painted her beautiful oval nails robins egg blue. She gave Bella’s hand a gentle squeeze, though Bella thought of how Esme could just as easily turn her hand into mangled hamburger meat.“Bella, I am so glad to see you. Thank you for bringing Edward back to us.”

Bella tried to smile, but the shape her face made didn’t feel like a smile, so she stopped trying.

Esme gave her hand another gentle squeeze and let it go. Bella couldn’t lift her gaze from where Esme’s hand had held hers, didn’t want to see the solemn way Esme and Carlisle regarded her. Bella wondered what expression Edward and Alice each wore. She let her eyes drift shut then - the vein in her skull pulsed behind her left eye and the blue fluorescent lighting of the airport terminal pierced her like Phineas Gage. With her eyes closed she saw it as a rod of steel running her brains through.

They walked to the garage in relative silence. Bella stumbled along, pressing her knuckles into her temple trying to ignore her sense that they were in fact having some kind of discussion just below her hearing range. She could feel Edward looking at her peripherally. As they passed a McDonalds, a TGIFriday’s, a specialty popcorn shop, the heavy waft of oil, salt, grease were mixed in with the clean rubbery, burnt coffee airport smell, and it was so strong she felt the smell on the back of her throat, pouring like a sludge into her stomach.

She’d stopped walking as they neared the elevator which would take them to the garage. The Cullen’s turned to look at her greenish face with a collective expression of concern.

“Um, I just have to —“ she managed before she lunged for a garbage bin nearby, and vomited violently, wretching loudly. She thought distantly how strange it was since she’d hardly had anything to eat in the last 24 hours. Her vomit felt like it was only water and strings of saliva. Any minute the painful spasms in her gullet would cease, but it took some time before her stomach finally relaxed. She felt someone’s hands holding her hair, another cold hand rubbing her shoulder. When she rose, she saw Edward and Esme standing behind her. Who had held her hair? Who had touched her shoulder?

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and then wiped her hand on the side of her jeans. “I’m fine,” she rasped. Her face felt wet and so tired. Her head throbbed down to her shoulders. A taste like death on her tongue. She focused on these unpleasant physical sensations, as she felt so weakened she was tempted to burst into tears, and felt a tell-tale tremble in her chin. If she let herself feel the other hurts, this one would not have to also hurt her, she reasoned.

“Bella,” Edward said after she stood silently for too long, battling her feelings into submission. She looked at him in the face for the first time since the flight, but kept her eyes nose-level. Didn’t help much though - Edward had such a beautiful nose of course. “You’re not _fine._ You just threw up, you’re sick.” He reached to feel her forehead, but she flinched and he dropped his hand instantly.

“I’m fine,” she said. She crossed her arms over her stomach, digging her fingers into her ribs. “I just want to go home. Please.”

The remaining walk to the car was quiet. Alice sat between Edward and Bella in the back, and Bella leaned her head against the cool window. Just a few more hours now, she thought. She could hear them talking, but she didn’t really listen. Just let their soft murmurs coax her into an hours long half-sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

Edward had wanted to walk Bella up to her front door and she didn’t have the wherewithal to refuse. His hand hovering near her elbow had felt strange. The air was so charged with potential between their skin - yet he wouldn’t touch her, and she’d been bitterly relieved.

“I don’t think you should come in,” she said, voice hoarse to a whisper.

“No, I agree, you’re right.”

She gave a jerky sort of movement, like a nod but a little off. “We, um. We should probably talk some more after I get some sleep.” She’d felt herself say the words, but she didn’t know where they came from or what exactly she meant. She met Edward’s frown with a puzzled one of her own.

“Yes, of course we should,” he said. Very serious. He hadn’t seemed at all confused.

Bella gave a more definitive nod this time. “Okay. I’m gonna go in then.” She quickly unlocked the front door and shut it behind her before she said or did anything else that would render her bewildered.

She discovered quickly enough that Charlie wasn’t home after calling for him a couple times and receiving no response. She slumped onto the couch in the den, where the shades were drawn, and it was nice, cool, and dark. She took out her phone and plugged it into the charger under the battered end table. She slipped off her shoes, and laid back, closing her eyes. Just long enough for my phone to charge, she thought. I’ll just close my eyes for five minutes.

But she awoke only when Charlie came home from work. At the sight of her rumpled and sleeping his anger quickly evaporated into weary compassion. He’d woken her just to tell her to get upstairs to get some sleep, give her a gruff hug, and iterate that in no uncertain terms she was eternally grounded. He watched her nod glassy-eyed through his brief but stern lecture. Broken capillaries dotted her cheeks like freckles.What had happened to her these last few days? He had to fight his instinct to interrogate her, but she looked so very tired and withered. He would wait until tomorrow.

Bella shuffled up stairs to the darkened upper landing. Her bedroom door stood open. She could see the outline of her bed silhouetted against the window. She turned towards the bathroom and turned on the faucet. What she needed was a bath. She brushed her teeth vigorously while the water heated up, carefully to scrape against her sensitive gums, on her fuzzy tongue. She stripped as the bathroom filled with vapor, balling everything up and stuffing it in the hamper.

There. Now she could be clean again. It was like the first bathing of her life. She crouched down on the tub, feeling the spray on the curve of her back. Now it was okay to cry. Now that she was at last alone, unobserved, with no gaze of concern and love upon her, she could finally give into it. But the despair would not come to surface. It pressed up against her throat, but it was just like it always did. Maybe she was in denial. Maybe none of it had really set in yet. But God she just wanted to get it out now while it was safe to do so. She trembled. She pulled herself upright when it became clear she really wasn’t going to cry, and quickly scrubbed herself head to toe with her purple bath puff and stepped out of the shower.

She snuck into her room, holding the towel around herself, once she could hear that Charlie was still downstairs. A game was on, baseball maybe. She didn’t know what sports were in season.

Back against the door she knew she couldn’t fall asleep now. She eyed her bed with some suspicion as she pulled on underwear, a t-shirt and sweats. She curled up on her desk chair, watching it, thinking. Her headache had resolved itself at some point in the shower leaving her uncomfortably alert. Although her sleep had been disordered and unsatisfying she felt too strange to just go to bed now, as if everything were normal.

The chair was leaving her butt numb, and her shoulders ached for the relief of a mattress. Fine, she thought. Fine, I’ll get into bed, but I’m just getting into bed, not going to sleep. I’m just getting in bed to be comfortable. To further defy her body’s craving for sleep she picked up _Wuthering Heights_ from the top shelf of the small bookcase beside her bed. She rolled onto her back, and stared up at her small comfort, the beloved worn cover of the slim paperback. It featured a watercolor illustration on the cover in shades of brown and orange, with the contemplative figure of a woman, Cathy presumably, in a pale lilac dress. Bella touched a finger to her face, wearing a similar expression. She read for maybe twenty minutes, only getting as far as Lockwood’s discovery of Catherine’s diary. Her eyes swiveled the page, skipping ahead and behind her comprehension.

Charlie was moving around downstairs. Probably locking the doors, turning off the lights. The stairs creaked with his passage. The bathroom door cracked open and then closed. The tap ran for a couple minutes while he brushed his teeth.

Even this she couldn’t follow, her mind tracking again and again back to where she didn’t want it to go. She switched between listening to Charlie getting ready for bed, and trying to read, but either way her mind was stuck on a loop, replaying _I tricked you, I tricked you, I tricked you_ over and over. “I tricked you,” she whispered aloud to herself.

She heard a noise suddenly at her window, and lurched up seeing it push open. A scream lodged itself in her swollen throat, but then she saw the white hands pulling a leg followed by a torso and head onto the window sill. One leg dangled out. “May I come in?”

Bella drew her knees up under her chin, glancing at the clock. It wasn’t late, but late enough that Charlie was snoring down the hall by now. The sight of him framed in the window was so familiar, and it fused painfully with all the _thoughts_ and _feelings_ she couldn’t yet address. “Um. Okay. I guess we should talk now.”

He sat hesitantly at the end of her bed, and turned a little so he was looking at her. “I’m sorry, I know your dad must have been furious.” His eyes were still dark, shadowed. God, his eyes. Long gingery eye-lashes, his straight, dark eyebrows. His long, beautiful nose.

“He seems… okay. He’s probably freaking out internally.”

“All the same.”

Bella pulled on a loose thread on her quilt, wrapping it around her finger tip til it turned purple, and then letting go. She did this several times before she finally said, “I don’t know where to start. I don’t feel how I thought I would feel if you were to come back.”

“How did you think you would feel?”

“Well, I guess I didn’t think you actually would come back.”

“Bella?” She could see him tilting his head down, and she glanced up. He was frowning. “Would you look at me?”

She glanced down reflexively, face burning. Her blood lub-dubbed in her ears, and she wondered if it was bothering him. Did he salivate at its tell-tale metronome? But then she felt treacherous and cruel. She looked back up at him with her teeth clenched.

“I think… I think I feel angry with you.”

He sighed and nodded. “I would be surprised if you weren’t.”

“It’s just I can’t really wrap my mind around the whole thing, and it was bad enough thinking you just didn’t really care about me after all, because even if the way you broke things off was excruciating enough thinking you were telling the truth. Do you know what I mean? But if I’m to believe that you still love me —“ She stopped as he opened his mouth, to interrupt, but something about her expression froze him. “ _If_ I’m ever to believe that, I mean… that alone is just… I’m sorry, but it’s just so… insane, Edward. I mean, this is a huge mess. You were going to _kill_ yourself over me, and you didn’t even really have like, legitimate _proof_ that I’d died. You could have actually killed yourself over absolutely _nothing.”_

It was difficult to read Edward’s expression in the soft, silver light that came from her window. He hung his head, tugged on his hair on one side. His hand clenched around the tender hair behind his ear. 

When he didn’t speak, she continued on. “I just can’t get past that you weren’t willing to talk to me about it at all. Or that you couldn’t just tell me the truth.”

“I was afraid,” he whispered.

“But why didn’t you _say_ that you were afraid? You always just told me that _I_ should be afraid, I don’t think you’ve ever even said you’ve been scared before today.”

Again she paused, waiting for him to disagree, to beg for mercy, for forgiveness. He seemed to be simply sinking further into himself.

“You know you asked _me_ to look at you, the least you could do is look at me while I’m telling you this,” she said, and leaned back on her palms, almost languid against her pillows.

His head snapped up, looking over his shoulder. The green light of her clock shone against his black eyes. He wiped at his eyes with the side of his hand quickly. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

She sat up abruptly. She’d never seen him cry before. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be mean —“

“Bella, stop. You’re not being _mean_ ,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. Even if you were being _mean_ I’m sure I deserve it.”

“Okay. Well. I’m glad you can understand that.” She drew her knees up under her chin again, feeling self-conscious suddenly. She wrapped the thread around her finger. “I guess you weren’t enjoying your _distractions_ or whatever the hell you said you’d be doing.” She looked up, and he’d turned to face her, sitting straighter than he had been before.

His expression was calm, but his gaze was fixed on her finger, wrapped in thread. “No, I wasn’t. I was trying to track Victoria.”

“Wait, you’ve been _here_?” Bella sputtered, a new flare of anger shooting through her.

“What? No…” he said, and then horrified comprehension dawned on his face. He groaned as he again gripped his hair. “Oh, God, she’s been here in _Forks_?”

“Yeah… for, like, kind of a while now. It’s been a whole thing.”

His eyes fell closed and he rubbed his temples with his fists. “Well, what I was about to say how it turns out I’m a rather poor tracker because I lost her somewhere around New Orleans, but it seems that it’s quite evident how abysmal my attempt turned out. I cannot _believe_ how thoroughly I have failed you. I think it might be impressive or at least comical if it weren’t so unforgivable.”

“Well, I don’t know about _unforgivable_ , but it’s been an experience, for sure,” Bella said. Her head felt like it was about to come loose from her neck any moment, if any more bizarre revelations were to be had about the past six months.

“You don’t know about unforgivable?” he said, expression intense, leaning just so towards her, as if to lunge at her maybe, or maybe just fall at her feet.

“I mean don’t get too excited, I’m still kind of really pissed off and confused and… stuff. But. Yeah.” She shrugged, turning her attention down to his knee propped up on the quilt. His shoe was almost touching the top of the quilt, and she thought about telling him to take his shoes off, _just please don’t put your shoes on my bed._ It was funny how he could be so fastidious about some things and so… _not_ about others.

He nodded, seeming to suppress a smile - but then the good-humored look was gone. “That’s very generous of you to even consider forgiving me at some point.”

“Yeah, I mean, I’m not just going back to regular life after you. I definitely haven’t in any manner of speaking. It’s truly wild how abnormal my life has only continued to be. I would say your disappearance only made things weirder.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Yes, that’s the impression I got from Alice.” He seemed hesitant to clarify, so Bella took the opportunity to divert the conversation from becoming anymore contentious that it already was - if he was prepared to warn her off the werewolves she thought she really might just start shrieking as she’d feared doing earlier.

“Will you guys be moving back?”

“I hoped so,” he said slowly. “I haven’t had a proper conversation about it with my family yet.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Why do you ask?”

“I was kinda worried if you were all just going to vanish again.”

“No. I promise I won’t vanish again unless you ask me to.”

“So will you be coming back to school too?”

He frowned. “I hadn’t really thought much of it yet. I wanted to know if you would want me to stay. I probably will come back to school though.It might seem odd if I didn’t I suppose.”

Bella nodded, and dropped her gaze again. An uncomfortable silence passed between them then, where Bella sensed Edward’s intensifying stare on the side of her face, and she pinned her stare anywhere, anywhere else. Maybe he hoped for her to provide them resolution, but she didn’t know what to say. The carefully held numbness she’d pulled over herself for so long was slipping, and it wasn’t just the old pain anymore. She felt very much on the verge of a public demonstration, though she had no clue as to what that demonstration would entail. Shrieking seemed to be on the table and so did a multitude of other violent and dramatic actions which she felt tensed into acting upon, though, again, she didn’t know what those actions entailed. “I think I need to be alone now,” she said when she couldn’t take it any longer.

She looked up to see his carefully neutral expression. “Okay. I understand.” He stood up slowly, and went to the window.

“Wait,” she said quickly, before she lost her nerve, and before she would regret _not_ saying it.

He turned to her, with a painfully hopeful expression.

“It’s just. You understand, right? Why we can’t just go on like nothing happened?”

He smiled just a little, sadly. “Of course I understand. Good night, Bella.”

“Good night,” she whispered.

She waited til he leapt from the window, landing silently somewhere beyond, before she laid back again. It took a moment for her head to stop spinning, and when it did she began to weep.


	2. Boys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> boys go to jupiter to get more stupider

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoooo doggie i did not think this would take so long to update but i couldn't keep myself from rewriting and rewriting it! still not 100% happy with it but i am definitely ready to post at this point lol.  
> if u guys thought last chapter was angsty this one might give it a run for its money! things start to mellow out a little bit after this point but personally i love angst yes i'm emo what about it

 

The night of her birthday was the last she saw of Edward for a few days. In fact, until the afternoon he parted with her in the woods near her house, her last encounter with him, he’d snapped his teeth inches from her neck. She’d sat quietly while Carlisle stitched her arm, not speaking or hardly breathing the entire time. He’d driven her home too, and by the time her head hit her pillow, she finally breathed, and released the anguish and fear in a suctioning burst of noise, a sob.

Months from them she dreamed of the empty look in his eyes, his teeth snapping and snapping at her, his teeth, as he held her, cutting her flesh apart, loosening the blood and drinking and drinking from her. In her waking time she’d wished he had. 

 

* * *

 

Jake wasn’t answering the phone. Bella had set herself a deadline of talking with him before the weekend was over, but it was late Sunday afternoon and it was third time Billy had answered and informed her he wasn’t feeling well. Yeah, right. She’d heard that one before.

“Dad,” she said sitting on the edge of the couch. Charlie was watching some sports highlights on TV. “Could I _please_ go see Jake? He won’t answer when I call.”

Charlie sighed, setting his beer can on the coffee table. “I think that would kinda defeat the purpose of the whole ‘you’re grounded’ thing, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, but that’s not _Jake’s_ fault,” she said, hoping Charlie’s fondness for Jake worked in her favor. “He’s an innocent bystander.”

“Bells, look. If you can’t get ahold of him, maybe he’s too busy. Maybe he really isn’t feeling good. Give it a couple days.”

“But, it’s important,” she said.

Charlie smirked. “Don’t you have some homework you’re in the middle of catching up on?”

Bella hung her head, and slumped away to resume her seat at her desk. It had been a long and strange day since she had returned, and since her conversation with Edward. She hadn’t called him. As far as she knew his phone was still disconnected, but she found herself compulsively checking for missed calls or texts from him anyway. In an act of defiance to her own moping, she left her phone at her desk while preparing and eating dinner. She took her time afterwards, carefully cleaning the pans and dishes, and then wiping down the counter tops. While she was at it she also cleaned out the fridge and took out the garbage.

By the time she made it upstairs she was dragging her feet, and hesitated in the darkened doorway of her bedroom, half-expecting to see Edward’s silhouette reclining on her bed. But no, he wasn’t there, and wouldn’t be there, as she’d told him to essentially back off and leave her alone. She dropped into her desk chair, finally turning her phone over, succumbing to her very confused desperation. Her breath stuck in her throat when she saw a text from an unknown number. She opened her phone to read it:

 

_Hi Bella, this is Edward. Got a new phone._

 

Bella realized she was smiling, and shook her head. “Calm down,” she muttered aloud. She typed him a response:

 

_Hi. Can I call you?_

 

His text came back a few minutes later: _Yes of course._

 

She laid back on her bed, bringing herself into stillness. Her pleasure teetered on the edge of sickness and panic. She drank in several lungfuls of air, big enough that her body tingled and settled. She opened her eyes after several minutes of this and called Edward.

He picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Hi,” she said.

“Is everything okay?” he said in a low voice.

She pictured his frown and she smiled. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just kind of wanted to talk I guess.”

“Oh,” he said. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Nothing in particular. Am I interrupting you or anything? Were you busy?” she said feeling suddenly stupid for assuming he might just be waiting by his phone for her to call.

“No, not at all,” he said quickly. “I can talk.”

She suppressed a smile. She felt a little mean for how much she was enjoying his fretting. But maybe he really _had_ just been waiting for her to call. “Okay, good. It’s weird, we’ve never really talked on the phone much before.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I guess I used to kind of always be around, there wasn’t a need.” He trailed off, and she thought he must share the painful twist she felt in her gut at the memory of the past few months - why he hadn’t _been around_ and why he wasn’t there now.

She shook her head. She needed to establish some small amount of levity, and it seemed he had no desire to do so. “What did you do today?”

“I got a new phone.”

She laughed quietly. “Okay, I knew that. What else?”

She heard a gust of his breath, creaking leather. She imagined he was laid out on his couch the way she was on her bed. In her mind she pictured him rolling onto his side, as if to face her. Shoes off, but probably wearing jeans. She wondered what he was wearing and she bit back a giggle at the idea that she might ask him. “Uh, well, I’ve been helping Carlisle and Esme get the house together. Send for some movers to their things from Ithaca. Everyone else has been out hunting, but I already went after I left your house last night.” She could hear the miserable downturn of his tone.

“You haven’t really seen anyone until yesterday, huh?” she said.

“No, not for a while,” he said, almost too quietly for her to hear clearly. They were both quiet for a moment and then he said, “I think they asked the others to go hunting so that they could talk with me without them eavesdropping.”

“Have they been worrying about you?” Bella said and grimaced. Stupid question. Of course they must be worried, but she knew so little of what transpired between the Cullens’ these last painful months. She closed her eyes, and imagined she was looking into his face, his dark gleaming eyes, his lips moving as he spoke. She could almost even imagine his smell, and the way his breath felt against her cheek when he whispered to her.

“Yes, I think _worrying_ might be an understatement for it,” he said wearily. “Please tell me how you’ve been Bella. I’ve been thinking of you all day but I didn’t even have a phone, and then I didn’t want to, um, bombard you.”

She noted him changing the subject, but decided if she _was_ determined to keep it light than she’d take the bait.

She now imagined him smiling a little, maybe embarrassed, but reassured upon seeing her warm expression. “Um, well, I’m grounded, so that’s kinda kept a lid on anything except homework.” Now she paused, thinking. However they may proceed from this relationship purgatory, she needed to tell him the truth, even if he wouldn’t like it. “I don’t know how much you already know about Jacob Black, but he’s been a really good friend to me since, um, you left.”

Edward didn’t respond for a moment, and when he did his voice sounded a little too even. “Alice mentioned him to me, yes.”

“Right. He, well, he was here at the time that you called — when, you know. I was trying to get in touch with him today, but I think he’s unhappy with me.”

“I see.”

Bella heaved a sigh, opening her eyes. She flipped on the lamp beside her bed, and sat up hugging her thighs to her chest. “You’re upset.”

He sighed now, his breath blowing crackling white noise in her ear. She could hear the leather squelching as he repositioned as well. “I’m not upset, it’s just… Bella, he’s dangerous.”

She rolled her eyes, though it was for her benefit alone. “Yeah, funny, he’s said the same thing about you.”

“I’m not trying to tell you not to be friends with him but —“

“Good, because I wouldn’t listen to you if you tried,” she snapped. “And you wouldn’t even know anything about it, because you haven’t been here to see for yourself how _not_ dangerous he is.”

He sighed again, and said something too quiet and muffled for her to hear.

“What? I couldn’t hear that.”

“I was just telling myself to shut up,” he said still partially muffled. 

Bella laughed in surprise. “Why do you sound so muffled?”

“Um, I’m just laying face down on my couch.” Shifting sounds.

She laughed again. “Okay, I’m picturing it. Wait, can I call you Count Mope-ula? Get it?”

He groaned. “I think if you do I’d make sure the Volturri kill me.”

The laughter dried up in her throat, and she started coughing, eyes bulging with shock. “God, Edward.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” he said. “I don’t know why I did.”“Okay,” Bella said slowly. She felt her pulse behind her eye, at the back of her skull. She pressed her knuckles to her closed eye as she had the day before.

They were each silent on their respective ends. Bella tried to imagine him on the other side, in his room, but she couldn’t just then.

“I kinda need to take a shower before I go to bed,” she said at last.

“Oh, right,” he said, sounding disappointed to her ears.

“Will you be at school tomorrow?”

“Yes. Alice will be there too.”

She nodded, thinking of asking if he was nervous, but then decided he probably wasn’t. “Okay, cool,” she said.

He was quiet for a moment. “Bella,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Have a good night,” he said, though she had a feeling he wanted to say something else.

“Good night,” she said and hung up.

 

* * *

 

School was weird. Bella tried to keep her head down, pretend that it was a normal school day. She turned in her homework assignments, took studious notes, and avoided listening in on any whispered gossip that followed her every step.

She saw Alice and Edward moving about campus, though she couldn’t bring herself to so much as make eye contact with either one of them. A jolt shot through her the few times they did make eye contact and she’d quickly looked away.

In the one English class she shared with Edward she was relieved that he now had been shuffled three rows ahead of her, so there was no risk of eye contact. But then again, there was little keeping _her_ from staring at the back of his head the entire period. She became absorbed in studying the way his hair curled at the nape of his neck to the point of entering a state of hypnosis.

Alice appeared in her gym class to her surprise. Since Alice didn’t dress down, there wasn’t an opportunity for them to interact, and Bella felt no desire to seek one out.

She hadn’t intended to avoid them, but what would she say to them? What would they say to her? She wondered throughout the day what they thought of her orbiting them, her eyes never quite meeting theirs. She’d wanted to feel some small amount of satisfaction but instead she felt bothered that they so easily accepted her distance.

 

* * *

 

Through several of her classes before lunch she noticed Jessica trying to catch her eye. Bella considered hiding in the bathroom at lunch, but there wasn’t much point in putting it off.

In the midst of waiting in the lunch line, Jessica cut in next to her.

“Hey!” she said, breathless and smiling.

Bella looked around and smiled uncertainly back.

“Are you sitting with us today?” Jessica asked.

“Um,” Bella said, picking up a fruit cup as she moved up in line. “Don’t I usually sit with you guys?”

Jessica inspected a packaged sandwich before setting it on her own tray. “Well, yeah, but, um, the Cullens are back? And they’re kind of sitting on their own?” She glanced meaningfully over her shoulder but Bella resisted the urge to look for herself.

Bella put a yogurt parfait with foamy bits of granola and blue berries on her tray next. “Oh, yeah.”

After paying they walked back to their customary table, Jessica claiming the seat beside Lauren, and Bella took hers beside Angela, who gave Bella a small smile. Bella looked up, and saw that she sat now in direct eyesight of Alice and Edward’s table, and of course, he was seated facing her. He was frowning and looking down.

“Helloooooo,” said Jessica, waving her hand in front of Bella’s face.

Bella started. “What? Sorry.”

“I was just asking —“

“Jess, don’t,” said Angela.

“I mean, aren’t you guys wondering?” Jessica said swiveling to look at Lauren and Angela each.

Lauren shrugged, looking bored.

Angela bit her lip.

“What?” Bella said again, getting a little peeved now.

“I just was asking if you, like, _knew_ the Cullens’ were gonna be back at school. It seems so, like, I don’t know. Random.” Bella wanted to laugh - Jessica’s attempt at tact was so very… Jessica.

“Um, yes, I did know.”

“Okay,” Jessica said, and nibbled on her carrot stick, deep in thought.

“Anyway,” said Angela, turning to Bella with an apologetic smile, and opened her mouth, likely to change the subject, but Jessica wasn’t to be swayed.

“Okay, here’s the other thing. Are you guys, like, together? You and Edward?”

Bella sighed and glanced over at Edward reflexively. He still cast his eyes down. One hand massaged his temple, as if he had a migraine. She wondered if vampires even got those - though the way he’d described thirst to her before had sounded painful it seemed like they suffered from few other ailments. “We… are taking it slow,” said Bella carefully.

“Okay, so no,” said Jessica, her expression serious and focused.

“Uh,” said Bella.

“Jess, are we still hanging out Saturday night?” Angela said.

“What? Oh, yeah I’m still on.” She looked over at Bella and grinned. “Oh, Bella, you should definitely come. We’re gonna watch Ten Things I Hate About You and talk shit about all the stupid boys we’ve wasted time on.” She flushed at this last part.

Bella’s eyes widened. “Oh, okay.”

“I mean,” said Jessica, leaning across the table to Angela and Bella. Lauren was typing rapidly on her phone. “I’m _so_ over Mike, like I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole. And you and Ben.”

Angela grimaced. “I mean, me and Ben are still really good friends, so I don’t know if I would say I’ve wasted time on him. Mike is totally a jerk though.”

Jessica pointed at Angela. “He’s _such_ a jerk, ugh. What did I ever see in him? And I guess you and Tyler are still going strong,” Jessica added looking at Lauren.

Lauren shrugged. “Yeah.”

“But Edward!” Jessica intoned suddenly, and turned back to Bella with a gleeful smile.

Bella noticed Edward’s head move in her peripheral vision.

“I mean, who does he think he _is_? Just runs off and then just, like, changes his mind? Like you’re at his beck and call or something?” she hissed across the table, as if somehow aware that Edward could hear their conversation quite plainly across the crowded lunch room.

Bella shrugged, cupping her neck with one hand, and fishing blueberries out of her parfait with the other.

Angela: “Did you guys start your paper for history yet? I still can’t decide what to do mine on.”

Jessica: “Oh, God, when is it even due?”

Sufficiently distracted, Bella looked up one final time to where Alice and Edward sat. They made brief, but intense eye contact.

 

* * *

 

After school and after her endless hour and a half at Newton’s Outfitters she drove to La Push. This was not strictly allowed but if Charlie saw fit to add a couple weeks, months or _years_ to her sentence of punishment, then so be it. She would not weather Jacob’s radio silence a moment longer.

In a dizzyingly familiar scene from just a month before Bella pounded on Jacob’s door. At least it wasn’t raining, although the bruised clouds above threatened it any moment.

Jacob answered, his hair flattened on one side, red sheet marks on his cheek. He squinted and then grunted at her. He turned around, leaving the door open behind him.

She hesitantly stepped through the doorway, closing the door behind her.

“Jake?” she called.

She heard him say something muffled from the living room, and she followed his voice down the hallway.

He was laid out on the cushy brown couch, illuminated by a single orange table lamp. He’d swaddled himself up in a yellow crocheted blanket, though his large bare feet stuck out the end. He gave her a sleepy glare over the top.

Bella sat gingerly on the edge of the couch by his feet. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I guess you really aren’t feeling good, huh?”

“What?” he rasped.

“Billy said you’ve been sick when I called.”

“Oh, no. Yeah, we don’t get sick. I just kinda wasn’t ready to talk I guess.”

Bella nodded, working to keep calm even though she felt anything but. “I get that,” she said quietly.

“Guess you’re here now though, and we gotta talk,” he said with a sigh. He reached one bare arm out from the blanket and tucked it behind his head. “You back with Bloodsucker Jr, huh?”

Bella snorted, surprising herself. That was a new one. “Not exactly, no.”

Jacob’s eyes widened and then narrowed. “No?”

“No, I mean. I didn’t want him to _die._ I had to go to him, Jake.”

Jake didn’t budge, his dark eyes twitching as he judged her expression. “But The Cullens are all back in Forks now.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t get it. Why did they come back if you’re not back together?”

“Jake, it doesn’t really matterwhy they came back. I just need you to know I’m not replacing you with Edward, that’s not what’s going on here. And I think I can see that you feel that way.”

Jake looked down and shrugged with one shoulder.

“Jake, you’re so important to me,” Bella said, wanting to reach out for his hand. Since one hand cradled his head and the other was still under the blanket, she grasped his foot beside her. His leg jerked.

“Jesus Christ, your hand is like an icicle, Bells.”

She released it. “Sorry.”

He heaved a sigh that turned into a groan by the end of it. “Bella, look, okay, it’s like this. I’m in _love_ with you, all right? You’re not just important to me or whatever.”

Bella froze, not even breathing. She closed her eyes.

She felt movement on the couch, sinking down beside her. “Bella,” he said, his breath hot against the side of her face.

“Jake, I —“ Her mouth was too dry to press on. “ Jake, I don’t know if I’m ready for that right now. With anyone. I need to clear my head a little.” She peeked at him sideways.

His expression was tense. “You’re not just saying that to spare my feelings while you go home and cuddle with your leech?”

“No, of course not.”

“Okay. So you might feel the same way then?” he said.

She was unable to stop the grimace from crossing her face, and said, “Jake, I _do_ love you, but not in the same way.”

“Are you sure?” he said, his expression unchanging. “I mean what about before you came back with him?”

She closed her eyes. Throat working, she fought the sudden urge to cry, she felt so wretched with guilt. Couldn’t she even give him this, after all he’d done for her this winter and spring? But if she had to tell the truth to Edward then she had to do the same for Jake. “Even then, Jake. I’m sorry, I don’t know when or if I ever would feel that way about you. But you’re like a… a brother to me.”

Jake groaned and she looked up at him, where he’d collapsed back against the couch and shot her a wry smile. “I’m not gonna lie, I was worried you’d say something like that.”

“Aw, Jake, come on,” Bella said turning to face him. She rested her cheek on the side of her wrist so they were eye-level with each other. “Aren’t sibling relationships more stable than romantic relationships anyway?”

“Spoken like an only child,” he said. He scrubbed his face with his big hands, and speaking from behind them said, “Okay, Bella.”

“Okay what?” she said.

He dropped his hands, so one arm rested along the back of the couch while he scratched his head with his other hand. “Okay I’ll think about the sibling thing. I mean it’ll be weird for me since the way I feel about you right now isn’t very brotherly or whatever.”

“Thanks, Jake. You’re taking this a lot better than I thought you were going to.”

“Yeah, well. Give me a little more time and I’ll be okay with it. I’d rather be a sibling or friend or whatever than nothing. But I don’t know. I really thought…” he trailed off and cast his gaze down, drawing his big arms across his chest. He frowned.

“What is it?” Bella said softly.

“I really thought we had something.”

“We do, Jake. Of course we do. ” Bella stretched out her hand that had warmed under her cheek, and held his forearm.

He looked up at her with an uncertain smile. “I need some time, Bells.”

“Okay,” she said. “I should probably go. Charlie grounded me for the rest of my life and I’m supposed to go straight home after work.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Jake said, stretching with a percussive series of bodily cracks and pops.

Bella shuddered. “Jake, that’s how you get arthritis.”

“Oh, come on, you don’t really believe that crap, do you?” Jake pulled the blanket around his shoulders as he stood.

Bella followed suit, though she was barely level with his chest. “It’s true. It’s science.”

Jacob scoffed and shook his head as he lead her to the door. “Even if it’s science, I’m never getting arthritis anyway, so you can save it.”

He pauses in the doorway, blocking her exit with his back to her.

“Uh, Jake?”

“Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking if you would wanna take your bike.” He turned to face her with a rueful smile. “I’d been actually, uh, thinking of bringing it to your house. Figured your dad’d be mad enough it’d keep you away from your bloodsucker and buy me some time.” He had the decency at least to grimace with embarrassment.

“Wow, that would have been really crappy,” Bella said, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah. That’s why I decided not to do it. I do think you should still have your bike, though.”

Outside the rain had slowed to a trickle, so Jake lead Bella around to the garage where he kept their bikes. He’d waxed them recently so they gleamed dimly in the gray afternoon light. Her bike was very beautiful, she’d forgotten that. The lustrous silver coils of engine, the voluptuous red fuel tank, the sinuous jut of handlebars. Bella sighed as she remembered the feeling of the leather seat between her thighs. “Charlie really would kill me,” she said.

“I can keep it here,” Jake said. He shrugged when she looked up at him, biting her lip.

“Would you mind? I don’t know when I can come back for it.” She trailed her nails along the paint, caressing. She decided she would come soon.

 

* * *

 

 

Charlie seemed preoccupied when he got in the door about ten minutes after Bella, and made no comment about the odd assortment of reheated leftovers Bella served for dinner. She’d wanted to bring up the bike, but their usually companiable silence over dinner struck her as oppressive tonight. Tomorrow I’ll tell him, she thought.

With dinner over Charlie grabbed a beer, and gestured towards the den. “You got homework?” he asked, pausing in the doorway with a forearm propped against the jamb.

“Yeah, you know. Still catching up a bit.”

“The Cullens back at school, huh?”

Bella focused on the dish she moved under a stream of hot water. “Yep.”

“You, uh, doing all right with that?” Charlie said. His boots squeaked on the floor as he shifted his stance.

“Yeah, dad, it’s been fine.”

“You sure? Because I can imagine it’d shake you up a bit.”

Bella looked up, and turned off the tap, so she could fix Charlie with an adequately perplexed frown.

He lifted his hands in surrender. “Look, I know. But if you want to talk about it, I’m all ears, all right?”

“All right,” said Bella, blushing just as Charlie did. “Thanks, Dad.”

She gnawed her lip as she worked, mentally chastising herself. She thought of Edward suddenly, realizing that she’d hardly thought of him this afternoon, and she was paralyzed. Her hand’s circular passage with the washcloth against the kitchen table came to a halt and she stared down, unblinking and dry-eyed, at the streaks of water on the pitted wood grain. She remembered with gut-twisting clarity his back to her in the cafeteria, the back of his head in their shared English class, the one time she’d spotted him in the halls, walking well ahead of her, so that she saw just the back of his head, as he disappeared around a corner. There had also been the two times she sensed him looking at her peripherally, gleaned just his shape and coloring in the corner of her eye, and she’d coached herself into ignoring him. How could she make sense of the conspicuously empty space now… occupied? How could she make sense out of it - he now just a phone call, a short drive away? Could it be so simple as that?

She drew in a rattling breath, just enough air to loosen her clenched throat.

 

* * *

 

She couldn’t concentrate on homework. Her cellphone drew her gaze away from her history textbook again and again. He probably wouldn’t text her first. He thought she wanted him to stay away.

She managed to push her way through her remaining homework, and take a shower and dress for bed before she finally buckled and texted Edward:

 

_Hi._

 

She set down her phone down on the bed cover, and stared at it, fingers steepled, fingernails digging into her chin. Edward’s return text came back hardly a minute later.

 

_Could I call you?_

 

She arranged herself carefully then, peeling the covers back and sliding between the sheet and quilt. Once positioned just so on her back, she pulled her long wet hair overhead, and around her pillow, like a dark wreath. She thought about turning out the light, to have this conversation in safe, suggestive darkness, but on second thought left it on. The soft pinkish glow, which hardly illuminated anything but the shape of her room, was most likely safer.

She texted him back:

 

_Go ahead._

 

Just as soon as her text sent her phone started ringing.

“Hi, Edward,” she said. It was still a novelty to say his name aloud. A twinge still shot through her midsection. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes of course,” he said. She could hear rustling, and movement on his end. “I just wanted to hear your voice.” Then he said, low and nervous, “Is that all right? I shouldn’t have assumed —“

“Of course it’s all right.”

“You avoided me today,” he said.

“I wasn’t avoiding you.” 

“It’s okay if you were. I understand why you would.”

“No, I… I just didn’t know how to explain. I guess I didn’t want to explain. It seemed like it would be easier than the alternative.” She closed her eyes, willing her breath to calm, to move past the top portion of her chest where it felt trapped. “I’m sorry. I’ve felt bad about it.”

“Don’t apologize, Bella.”

Even though he didn’t ask, she said, “I just don’t know how I should act. It’s been so hard to get used to you not being there.”

He was quiet on the other end. She could hear wind, movement, rustling. Finally he said, “I understand if you want to avoid me at school, Bella, I won’t hold it against you.”

“But I don’t _want_ to avoid you.”

“What _do_ you want, then?” he said. His voice on the phone was so very soft and sweet, right in her ear. If she closed her eyes she could picture his weight on the mattress beside her. She felt a surging of self-loathing, like a wave of black oil atop a plunging tide of affection for him. She thought of herself poised over the cliff in La Push, how she dove nearly to her death for his voice, and how even now given a chance to hold some meager amount of power over him, she knew she would still die for him.

It took her another moment to straighten the knot lodged in her throat before she could speak. “I think I would like it if we could be friends at least.”

“You’d really want to be friends?” he said. She could hear him fighting a smile.“Yeah, I do. Would you be okay with that?”

“I’d be more than okay with that.”

“We’ve never really been friends before,” Bella said. “I wonder what it’ll be like.”

He laughed, though it sounded a little shaky. “I don’t know. I suppose you already know I’m a vampire so we hopefully won’t have to go over that again.”

“Right, I think I have that part down. Good thing we got that out of the way. Guess we’ll just have to do boring stuff like everyone else,” she said, rolling onto her side.

“I guess so.”

“Do you have any ideas of boring, normal things we could do?”

“Well, speaking as a century old creature of the night, I don’t have much personal experience with normal,” Edward said.

“You’re right, I don’t know why I thought you’d know,” Bella said with a laugh. “By the way, where are you? It sounds like you’re outside.”

“That’s because I _am_ outside,” Edward said. “I went hunting with Carlisle, but I decided I wasn’t ready to go home yet.”

“Was he trying to have another ‘talk’ with you? Like you were saying yesterday?” Bella hedged.

He sighed. “Yes. He’s been brushing up on his therapy modules apparently,” he said dryly.

“Oh,” said Bella. “Is that bad? I guess I wouldn’t love it Charlie tried to psychoanalyze me.”

“It is, but it’s not that. For one thing most people probably can’t read their therapist’s mind. But more than that it’s just not necessary.”

“Wait, what? How isn’t it necessary?” She started to sit up, but made herself lay flat. Stay calm, she told herself.

“He’s concerned about the suicide attempt, but it was only because I thought you’d died. Since you’re very much alive, there’s no need to keep going over it like this,” he said.

“Wait, wait, wait,” she said. Unable to lay prone any longer, she snapped upright, blood whirling in her ears. “If I had just been a minute or a _second_ late you could be —“ The word “dead” lodged itself like a burr at the back of her tongue. She changed tactics to something less painful. “Edward, you can’t just dismiss making a serious suicide attempt just because I’m alive. What happens if I get seriously ill or a car accident or something? Death is a big part of humanity.”

He sighed. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise you’ll live a long life, so don’t worry about mine.”

“Edward,” she said, hissing his name in theatrical whisper. She packed all the meaning she couldn’t put into other words, and hoped he heard the fear and frustration in her voice saying his name like an incantation - an incantation that would hopefully imbue him with a speck of sense. When he didn’t speak she said, “I just can’t believe how blasé you’re being about this.”

“On the contrary I take this very seriously. I’ve told you before, Bella, that this is something I’ve thought about. I don’t need therapy.It’s not a chemical imbalance or anything of the sort - it’s a completely rational decision.”

“Are you listening to yourself?” Bella hissed into the receiver to keep herself from shouting. “Just because you’ve thought about it doesn’t mean it makes any sense!”

He was quiet for a moment, just the rhythmic snapping of twigs. Wind blowing.

She felt a powerful urge to apologize for her tone of voice - even for rebuking him at all. But she couldn’t make her voice take shape.

“Bella, I’m not saying this to hurt you,” he said. “I just don’t see much of a point in existing without you alive. Is that so difficult to understand?”

“But don’t _you_ understand how messed up that is - to only want to exist because I’m here?”

“Well, what about when you jumped from the cliff?”

“I didn’t _jump_ , I was _diving.”_

“Is there such a big difference between the two?”

“Yes, because I wasn’t trying to _kill_ myself, I was just trying to have some fun. They do it all the time in La Push.”

“But you also could have easily died then as well. I’m sure you knew that at the time too,” Edward said. His voice impossibly mild, as if they were making small talk. Bella’s mounting incredulity and anger was disrupted for a moment by bewilderment - what _were_ they even talking about? Had he misheard her? Was it poor reception? She pulled her phone away from her face to see that she had four bars at the top of her screen.

“So me doing something potentially dangerous is the same thing as you very deliberately trying to take your own life?” Bella said.

“No, of course it’s not the same. But maybe more similar than you’re giving credit.”

“So by whatever insane logic you’re claiming, you’d understand if I killed myself if you’d succeeded in killing yourself? Do I have that right?” 

“No, not at all. Bella, you _know_ it’s different for you than it is for me,” he said, an edge of irritation in his voice now.

“What are you talking about? How would it be different for me than it is for you?” she said in as close to a yell as she dared while Charlie dozed down the hall.

“Because you’re human, Bella, and given enough time you would recover. And my life, if you could call it that, is inherently parasitic, unnatural, and empty and yours couldn’t be further from that.” His voice had resumed its state of polite disinterest.

Contrarily Bella felt as if the needle point of his words had punctured the taut surface of her skin, deflating her into a wad of bitter, weathered rubber. “Do you really think that?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “You know I do.”

“But you’re none of those things, Edward, how could you say that?” The sensation that was rapidly replacing her indignation of only a moment before was despair. It took the same bloated shape inside her abdomen. She fought an embarrassing urge to cry.

“Because!” he exclaimed, surprising her. “Bella you have no idea some of the things I’ve done or what it’s like to exist this way.”

“Then tell me!” she whisper-yelled into the receiver.

He was quiet for a long moment. She could hear water rushing. He said something but she couldn’t hear.

“What was that?”

It went quieter again and he said, “Can you hear me now?”

“Yeah, what was that?”

“The Sol Duc. I’m almost home. You should probably go to sleep, it’s getting late.”

“Wait, what did you say earlier?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it. I should be more careful about how late I keep you on the phone.”

“But I’m not tired,” she said.

“Well, you’re not going to get tired arguing with me on the phone,” he said. Even though she thought she heard his smile in his voice, she also thought she could be wrong, and maybe he was just exasperated. She felt another psychic stab, rending her despair in the thousands of fragmented pieces which fell behind her eyes like snow, like television static, body buzzing with the sensation of it all, the fear the sadness, the _fear_.She closed her eyes tightly against the welling of tears in her eyes. 

“Fine,” her voice uttered behind her tense lips. “See you tomorrow.”

“Good night, Bella,” he said.

She pulled her phone away from her face and hung up without another word. She turned it off to keep it from ringing or from keeping silent in the dreaded absence of Edward’s concerned phone call. To distract herself from crying she picked up _Wuthering Heights._ She fell asleep soon enough thankfully dry eyed.

 

* * *

 

The week moved on in fits and starts. Bella gave Jacob space as he requested, though it wasn’t easy. She started to write him a dozen odd texts throughout the week before she made herself stop.

Bella made a more deliberate effort to avoid Edward at school. The following Tuesday he’d approached her in the parking lot before class. It’d been a shock to look at him head on, and it took her a solid 30 seconds or more before she’d remembered to look away, face burning. He was wearing a dark red sweater and she’d concentrated on this, even as her mind played over his anguished expression. She’d halted, not moving, speaking, or blinking.

“Bella, I’d like to apologize,” he said quietly.

“Hm,” she said. Just as long as she didn’t have to move in order to interact with him it would be okay and she wouldn’t burst into tears.

He’d studied her for a long moment, and dipped his head to try to meet her gaze but her eye-line lowered to a puddle of rainwater and car oil between them. He reached a hand up to fist in his hair. “I really am sorry. I know you have a point.”

Eyes still pinned on the puddle, she said, “Maybe we’re not ready to be friends yet.”

It was his turn to lock in place, his mouth half open ready to speak or close, but hung somewhere between the two.

She’d looked up at last, with a small amount of very grim satisfaction, to see the look of bewilderment and hurt on his face.

She started to walk away, but his hand shot out, grabbing just the corner of her sleeve. She didn’t dare look up, and held her arm out stiffly towards him. There wasn’t enough room between them, and she could _smell_ him, the sweet spiciness of him. A bodily memory swept over her like a phantom, of all the times she had dug her nose into the side of his neck, behind his ear, the side of his lean body, when they had once laid beside each other each night. It wasn’t enough to simply not meet his gaze, she had to turn her face away. “Please let go of me,” she said.

He didn’t for a moment, and she could feel his stare intensifying on the back of her head. “Bella,” he said urgently. “Wait.”

She waited, and so he dropped her sleeve. With that she’d walked away.

 

* * *

 

She stewed for a bit longer that day before the roiling back and forth of anger and dread cooled into a barbell of sadness, resting heavily on her chest. Why had she been so mean? Was it mean? She knew she didn’t want him to leave her alone, not really. He’d apologized, she believed him that he was sorry. The answer unfurled and unfurled in her mind, and it was too complicated and painful for her to comprehend its meaning, though it ran behind her eyes every conscious moment that week.

Alice approached her that day in PE as well. It was the last twenty minutes of class, and the class was walking laps around the gym. Most of the class walked in groupings or pairs, while Bella plodded alone, brooding. She jumped when she felt Alice’s cool hand at her elbow.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you,” Alice said, with a sheepish smile. She held her hands carefully away, though she fell into step beside Bella. “Can I walk with you?”

Bella shrugged. “Sure,” she said.

Bella looked down at Alice’s toned and white legs beside hers - which had no real muscle definition and several bruises at various stages of development. One bruise on the outside of her thigh was almost perfectly round, deep maroon on the inside and dissolved to mauve and green around its circumference. There was a strip of prickly dark hairs that stood out on her shin, where she’d missed shaving the night before. She glanced again at Alice’s legs. Not a hair out of place, of course.

“Did you see what happened this morning? With Edward?” Bella said in a rush, just as Alice began to speak.

Alice bobbed her head slowly, eyes dark and serious. “Yes, I did. I wasn’t looking intentionally. I know you want some space right now, and I can understand why.”

“I just feel so…” She gestured towards her face, clawing and turning her fingers in the air. She looked, wild-eyed at Alice, eyes so wide Alice could see the whites underneath the iris. “I don’t even know. I want to work it out, I want things to go back to how they were. But at the same time I feel… I feel…” She let herself deflate at this; all the feelings pressed out and up inside her chest, squeezing out her vital insides. She couldn’t name these things. Not yet. “It feels ugly,” she said in a harsh whisper at Alice’s cautious stare.

“Oh, Bella,” Alice took Bella’s hand in hers. “Bella, it’s okay if you don’t want to forgive him. Or if you simply can’t.”

Bella gnawed on the inside of her lip, and then moved to the side of her cheek, running her teeth over a small bump from where she’d bit into her cheek earlier. It was still very tender, and she kept it good and tender with the jagged edge of molars, pulverizing it until the flesh felt rough against her tongue. Finally she said, “Has he ever attempted it before?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Because he’s told me he’s thought about it before. He’d considered it with James.”

“Yes, I know,” said Alice. “I saw.”

“Oh,” said Bella, cheeks heating. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you would’ve seen. But of course you did.”

“It’s okay, don’t apologize.” She gave Bella a weary smile. 

At the end of class, after they’d changed and emerged to wait with everyone else inside the gym, Bella noticed the tension resume between them. The still stood beside each other, but they were quiet now. Bella fiddled with her phone in her pocket. Alice studied the rafters with a serene expression. “Alice,” Bella said, before she lost her nerve.

Alice looked over with a little smile. “It’s okay, Bella. You need space from all of us right now. I wronged you, just as Edward did.”

Bella was surprised and then annoyed by the powerful urge to cry, and closed her eyes to trap the tears. She felt her face spasm before she got it under control. She managed to whisper, “Thank you.”

The bell rang then, and Alice gave Bella’s arm a squeeze. “Don’t mention it. I’ll see you later.”

 

* * *

 

 

The week did not improve from there. She wrote several texts to Edward of varying lengths, texts which she deleted. She didn’t really know how to give language to the anguish she felt for and because of him so by Thursday she resigned herself to no-contact. She didn’t let herself dwell on her desire for Edward to come to his own conclusions; it was easier if she just pretended like she held the reins. At least he seemed very sorry, based on the number of times she caught him staring at her throughout the week. It was heartening, but what would all that staring really amount to?

But then she would think again of his smell, the sudden imminence of his body in front of hers, his face, his honeyed eyes. She remembered that in the summer before he vanished that she would sit against her pillows with his head resting on her thighs, while she combed his hair. It was difficult, his hair was so thick and wild, but she could be very careful and delicate. He had seemed practically asleep, his posture and expression was so peaceful. Or how they’d watch old movies on stormy nights, legs tangled. She’d press her cheek to his chest, feeling the softness of his t-shirt, the contours of his chest, inhaling deeply. She often fell asleep well before the credits rolled, as her body liquified around him.

On Thursday she looked up at his staring during lunch, and neither looked away. Once she’d fought the initial urge to look away, she found her gaze fixed to his - a desperate bid at communication where words had failed them. His expression transformed, from intent with concentration until his eyebrows relaxed, his eyes turning wide into a look of open yearning. She wondered what he must read in her own expression.

 

* * *

 

By Friday she felt utterly trapped in a tremulous state of indecision and heartache. Each day she stared longer and harder at Edward, returned his gaze unwaveringly. Though he couldn’t read her mind, she pretended as if she tried hard enough, he would receive her psychic message: P _lease prove me wrong._

She had reestablished a tenuous friendship with Alice since that Tuesday, so she at least had that small comfort; from that day forward they sat, ran and walked laps, and teamed up together, though sometimes they wouldn’t speak a word to one another. They didn’t talk about Edward when they did. Bella had a dizzying sense that they had spoken of little else since she’d first befriended Alice. She was embarrassed to find that she knew next to nothing about her, for someone she’d mourned like a lost sister. She hadn’t known Alice’s strong preference for Calculus over history and English, she hadn’t known about the detailed ink drawings she labored over in a worn sketch book, anything really about her decades long relationship with Jasper.

It made her think about how many of those things she didn’t know about Edward.

She slept poorly that week, worse each night. Her mind replayed the frothing waves, sucking her into blackness which turned red and hot, pouring her into a drain, into the black expanding pupil of an eye. She would wake drenched in sweat, gasping, realizing she’d been holding her breath in her sleep.

 

* * *

 

Friday night Bella drove to pick up Angela on her way to Jessica's sleepover. She was already out front when Bella drove up, sitting with her legs bent to her chest. She wore a red coat that Bella had never seen her wear before, and her lips were lacquered pink. Bella was relatively underdressed in her oldest pair of jeans and a flannel shirt with a hole in the elbow.

As she got into the cab of Bella’s truck, she smiled, and said a breathless, “Hey!”

“Hi, Angela. I like your coat. Is it new?”

“No, I’ve had it for a while.”

“Huh,” said Bella. “I guess I don’t normally notice that kind of thing.” She had the same sense of shame as she had with Alice - was she really so very disinterested in her friends?

They drove in silence for a few minutes, before Angela said, “No radio?”

Bella glanced down at the black jagged maw in the center of her dash. “Um, no. It broke.”

“Yeah, I see that,” said Angela with a wry smile. She cocked her head. “Hey are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I’m… You know. Can I be honest?” She glanced at Angela in the corner of her eye, and tightened her hands on the steering wheel.

“Of course, you can, Bella.” Angela had her purse on her lap, and rummaged around in it.

Bella glanced again at Angela, but couldn’t make out her expression in the darkened cab. Why had she asked if she could be honest, when she knew, she _knew,_ she could not ever really be honest? What would it sound like even if she could be honest? “I’ve been having a hard time with Edward and the Cullens being back.”

“Aw, yeah, I can imagine.” Angela pulled out a small plastic brush from her bag, and began to brush in little downward strokes, starting from from the tips of her hair. When she got to her roots she pulled the brush back down in a fluid motion. “It was really hard right after me and Ben first broke up.”

“Yeah?” Bella adjusted her grip on the steering wheel. Her palms felt slick against the naugahyde.“Yeah, I mean we did everything together for so long. I never had a boyfriend or anything before him either.”

“Same with me and Edward,” Bella said, smiling a little. At least this much made sense to one of her peers, if nothing else.

Angela began to respond but Bella’s attention was diverted as the dash of the truck went dark. “Oh, crap crap crap.” She jammed her foot on the brake, but the car coasted on against the curving wet asphalt. Just as the car hurdled towards the guardrail, a disembodied voice, a voice she knew well, in her mind said calmly, “Pull the emergency brake.”

The truck lurched to a full stop, throwing their bodies hard against their seatbelts. Bella and Angela looked at each other, wide-eyed. Bella massaged the center of her chest where her belt had likely bruised her with it’s cutting force. Deeper beneath her flesh she felt something else. The words rang in her ears. _Pull the emergency break_. “Are you okay?” she said. This also sounded disembodied to her, but she knew it was her own voice.

“I’m fine,” Angela squeaked out. She had one hand clenched to the door, and the other still gripping the brush in her hair.

“Okay, good. Um.” She felt odd, like what being drunk must feel like or maybe it was something weirder. She cleared her throat. “I’m gonna call Jacob, he’s a mechanic.”

Angela bobbled her head.

But her call went straight to voicemail, so she left him a message half pleading and half scolding for letting his phone die. Why did he even _have_ a cell phone if he never seemed to charge it or have it on him?

“Dammit.” Bella pressed the edge of her phone into her lip. “Okay.” She dialed, knowing that her call would be answered this time.

 

* * *

 

He arrived quickly, the headlights sweeping across the back window of the truck cab, through the dark.

“Do you want me to come out with you?” Angela said.

“No, it’s fine, just stay in here. It’s raining anyway.”

“Okay, I guess. Maybe we should have a signal if you want me to come out.”

Bella snorted as she pulled her hood up. “Okay, what’s the signal?”

“Um.” Angela’s serious expression broke. “I don’t know. Maybe itch your nose.”

They both jumped and screamed hearing the wrap of knuckles on Bella’s window. Bella shoved her door open, half-hoping she’d wack Edward in the shins for that one. “Oh my God, Edward!” she hissed.

He wasn’t wearing a rain slicker like her, just a dark colored long sleeve thermal. His hair hung over his eyes, curling a little in the moisture. “I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to scare you.” He waved to Angela in the window overBella’s shoulder with a contrite grimace.

Bella grunted in grudging acceptance. 

“So what happened?” he said walking around to the hood of the truck. He tapped the top, to signal for Angela to spring the latch.

“Um basically just what I said on the phone. Tank’s full and everything. I didn’t know you knew that much about cars,” she said in a burst.

He cocked his head, regarding her curiously.

“I mean, obviously you know about cars, just not mechanic stuff - I thought you told me that was more Rosalie’s thing.” Her face felt hot. She could practically feel the rain drops evaporating off her cheeks.

“Yes, she has more expertise than I, but I’m sure I could tell if there’s something obvious that’s wrong.”

“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

He lifted the hood, bending over the slick coils with a look of concentration.

She noticed Angela watching them in the windshield, and when Bella caught her eye, she raised her eyebrows and pantomimed itching her nose.

Bella rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“I’m surprised you’re not freaking out,” Bella said, turning back to Edward.

He frowned, though he didn’t lift his gaze from the engine. “Of course I am.”

She tentatively pulled her hood back, noticing that the rain had stopped - though when she freed her face from its confines, she felt that the rain had simply turned to mist. She kept her hood down anyway. The better to take in his appearance beside her now. She was tempted to reach out to touch him, just to be sure he wasn’t a figment of her imagination. The remembering feeling passed through her fingertips, another time when she’d felt his shoulder, his arm, to such an extent that she knew what the texture of his shirt would feel like. It was stranger still to have his voice conjured so acutely in her ear, and then have him here now in front of her, as if she’d summoned him by some means beyond the mundane.

He straightened up, his hands twitching at his sides for a moment, as if straining to reach for her. “Bella, I’ve been so wrong. I shouldn’t have said anything about Jacob. I shouldn’t have said most of what I’ve said to you this week. So, yes, it… was upsetting to hear how narrowly you avoided a fatal accident. But you _did_ avoid it.”

“Yeah. It was scary though,” she admitted. It felt confessional, juicier with sentiment than it should have been.

It was quiet between them for a moment, and when she looked up his eyes were shining with intensity, almost angry. His voice was very gentle when he said, “I need to move my car up next to yours.”

They stood together for a moment, neither meeting the other’s gaze. She felt her face turning hot as she thought back on the mortifying affection she felt for him. The anger was slipping away from her, though she wasn’t close to finished with it yet.

She peeked up, and he was studying his shoes with a tragic expression. His hair clung to the sides of his face and neck, and she thought if her wet hair stuck to her skin like that it would itch and bother her. She wanted to push his hair out of his face so much she felt seasick.

She leaned against her bumper while he pulled the Volvo up beside her. When he climbed out holding jumper cables, she noticed he’d pushed his hair off his forehead a little, so it hung, pointing arrow-like into the corner of his eye, which seemed even more uncomfortable. It did make his dark eyebrows stand out handsomely, giving his elegant face a mischievous shape.

“Do you need any help?” she said.

Edward lifted his head to give her a wry smile.“I think I have a handle on it, thank you. Is there something I’ve done that’s led you to believe I don’t know anything about cars?”

“ _I_ don’t know much about cars,” Bella said. “ _I_ don’t know what this all,” she gestured wildly with one hand, “involves.”

“You can come and see what I’m doing - it’s not very complicated, and it could be good for you to know.”

She hesitated, her hand resting on the top edge of her door.

“If you want to,” he said quietly. His head disappeared back under the hood.

“No, I’ll come see, you’re right.”

He handed her one end of the cables, and pointed into the guts of the car, giving a brief explanation. The entire time she felt overwhelmed with a kind of anticipation, a prickle under her skin. Did he notice as well the charge of proximity between them? She hadn’t forgotten it, but it was like the first time she’d ever felt it. Hopefully he wouldn’t ask her anything that required an answer from her anymore than two syllables; her consciousness drifted somewhere south of her neck, pulsing with awareness.

“Would you like to do the honors?” He held out the end of the red cable to her in offering.

“I will, thank you,” she said, accepting the cable with a flourish. She turned quickly so that her hair whipped against his arm.

He cracked a small, nervous smile, as if she were a taciturn cobra, and not a thousand times more fragile than he.

She paused at the bumper, as she sensed Edward move behind her, felt his presence a few inches away from her elbow. “Okay, so which end of the battery do I put it?”

He pointed, and his arm brushed against hers just a little. “Sorry,” he said, giving her a sideways look of anxiety. “It’s the positive terminal.”

She clipped it in place, and turned to look at him over her shoulder. He was still standing very close, not close enough so that they were touching, but closer than she expected. His eyes were like lanterns, peering through the dark, with flickering inhuman, avidity. Just like in the parking lot, bodily remembrance seized her. She nearly gasped with the combined sensation, the memory of him holding her with the blue ghost glow of the television, and then the memory of him crouched before her, strings of venom dripping from his teeth, and then the conjured psychic presence he’d haunted her with for months, his phantom immaterial but just as compelling. “So what now?” she said.

He didn’t respond for a long moment, as the energy seemed to drain from him, until his expression became drawn, and he closed his eyes. He was utterly still then, rhythmically clenching his hands at his sides.“Now I need to start up my car, and keep it running for —“

“No, that’s not what I meant,” she said with urgency.

“Whatever you want now, Bella. Anything you want.”

“I can’t just _tell_ you what to do,” she said. “Don’t you get that?”

His eyes moved back and forth between hers, maybe seeing something different in each eye. He said, “Of course not. I meant only that I’m following your lead - I won’t fight whatever it is that you want.”

“You won’t _fight me_. Is that it? How can you even say that?” Her voice had a watery texture, though the feeling stayed mercifully below eye-level.

His amber eyes moved again between hers, his expression shifting and smoothing and shifting again. His mouth opened slightly and closed again. She saw the things he might say, the things he wanted to say but couldn’t, and then she got impatient.

“Why did you push me off the phone like that?” she said. She hadn’t been thinking of it, not until she said it but now that that deep down part of her consciousness had spoken. It wasn’t just impatience, it was, clean and true anger. It shot through her quick and hard, leaving her light-headed and incandescent. His face actually _glowed_ to her in the dark, looming with divine sadness. She had the absurd notion of shaking her fist at a spirit. “If you claim to care about me at all, if you’re in any way _following my lead_ , then you could act like it. Otherwise I’ll continue to believe you’re just here fulfilling some stupid self-flagellating sense of guilt or whatever the hell you think you’re doing.”

“Bella, I would grovel if it made a difference,” he said, though his eyes took on a fiery quality.

Bella barked a laugh. “Go ahead! ”

He narrowed his eyes a little, and then slowly began to stoop to a kneel in front of her on the wet asphalt.

“ _What - stop it!”_ She grabbed a fistful of fabric at each of his shoulders, trying in vain to pull him back to his feet. She glanced wildly towards Angela, but she couldn’t make out her face through the dark windshield. “What are you _doing_?”

“I’m groveling, or I will if you let go of me for a minute,” he said, looking annoyed. He gently pried one hand off of his shirt.

Bella reluctantly released him but hissed, “Why are you kneeling like that? God, are you insane?”

“Bella, I wouldn’t be groveling if I’m not kneeling,” he said.

She covered her face with her hands.

“Bella,” he said softly.

She dropped one hand to look down at him, and his reached through the gloom. His fingers hovered near hers, asking. She dropped her hand just an inch more, and he folded her’s between his palms. He looked up at her, at last. It had started to rain again, a little more heavily, so that his hair darkened and water ran down his nose and cheeks. He licked his rosy lips.

“I’m begging you, Bella. Please give me another chance. I know I don’t deserve it, I know I shouldn’t even ask. I need you, Bella, I miss you desperately. I’m so sorry, Bella, I’m so so sorry. Without you my life is utterly devoid of meaning. If you’ve moved on, then I… would understand. But know that I love you. I love you and I will always need and want you.” He abruptly stopped, and closed his eyes. He held her fingers against his cheek and then to his lips. A spasm of emotion crossed his face, and then it passed. He opened his eyes slowly.

She felt her body throbbing with something, and it moved down her arm, through her wrist and fingers in Edward’s tender grasp, to the warmed flesh of his lips. The sadness, the anger, and fear moved under her skin, through her, passing through them in waves.


End file.
